charges were that of refusing to pay the poll tax. This tax was being put to use in the Mexican war, which was “the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool…” Here he directly confronts the problem of our government in an attempt to rally forces into a revolution. We can speculate on the logistics of this, but it is reasonable to believe that even Thoreau new that something this drastic would not take place –at least not for the same reasons he believed in. He believed that the “machine” that is our government has grown to have far too much “friction”. The real beauty about his claims of our government being like a machine is that every example he gives is spoken of as a hypothetical situation. He does not say, “our government is a machine”, but rather “if a government becomes like a machine…”; this technique tends to avoid offending anyone. After this, he uses statements like “overrun and conquered by a foreign country” and “subjected to military law” to provide evidence for the transformation of our government into a machine. Later he compares the struggle between an acorn and a chestnut that fall side by side to the way man should live. “If a plant cannot live and grow according to nature, it dies; and so a man.” The many similes he uses throw his emotional and ethical argumentation at us together. This seems to be especially effective in his piece. His attitudes on the power of the government are rather unique; “[the government] can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.” After analyzing all of these points, there is a distinct impression that Thoreau believes that the average American is ignorant of their own rights and duties as a citizen. To capture the “fruit” of these people, his closing sentences provi...
